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The Sultan’s Table

Enmore Road isn’t somewhere we venture to all that often even though it’s a ten minute walk up the road and has many restaurants to choose from. For a little while now I’ve wanted to try Sultan’s Table since hearing a few recommendations and sadly our first attempt by just turning up on a Friday night was a complete failure. They were completely booked out and many people were being turned away. This was all a little too familiar to our last recent attempt with Turkish food at Pasha’s where we also left after trying to get in without a reservation. You’d think we’d learn something, right?

The second attempt came on a Tuesday when we got home from work, not feeling like cooking and decided to wing it and try Sultan’s again. At 6.45pm we get there and it’s packed! This is unbelievable. It’s just a glorified Turkish takeaway! There was one single table available outside on the footpath but we got there just after an annoyingly-indecisive couple that needed to have a five minute discussion on whether they wanted to sit out there or not.

“Make up your mind, people!”

No, I didn’t blurt this out, though if they could read my mind their ears would have been ringing from my impatient tone. Thankfully Mr & Mrs Indecisive left and we grabbed the table. We were starving so we promptly ordered some bread & humus (10) while we perused the limited menu for something grilled. Sitting on the other side of the window from the grilling metal skewers of meat, we just had to have it. Though when I spotted the stuffed pide coming out of the woodfire oven I made an instant vow to return very soon. The bread here really is delicious so with a filling I can only assume it is something else.

Sadly with the combination of being short-staffed, busy and us sitting outside, we were forgotten about. It took an hour for our meals to come out after ordering them plus one query at the half hour point. Not good, Mr Sultan. All was soon forgotten when we took the first bite into the juicy izgara kofte (12) – grilled seasoned meatballs. All grilled meats come on a bed of flat bread with sides of chopped tomato and red onion, grilled green chilli and tomato half and a few more pieces of bread on the side. The bread sitting under the meat soaked up the juices and was almost the best part.

The lamb shish kebab (14) was a virtual mirror image of the meatball dish and sadly wasn’t as tender on the inside and charred on the outside as I’d hoped for. It wasn’t terrible, just a little ordinary.

I had a tiny bit of room left so I checked out the sweets cabinet which was mostly filled with sweet pastries of the baklava-kind. I chose one of the birds nest (2.5) pastries and went halves with Mr K. This was incredibly delicious and fresh and rounded up the meal perfectly. Next time I think I’ll book a table.